Self-Driving Money: How AI & Stablecoins Could Transform Finance

Everyone is talking about self-driving cars, but the real revolution might be self-driving money.

Well, the City Institute reveals that we are moving past the hype and into a world where AI and stablecoins take over the chores of managing your finances, and we're talking about programmable dollars that know when to pay your mortgage, auto-balance your savings, and Even possibly embed compliance rules directly into the code.

So is this the chat GBT moment for institutional blockchain?

Well, joining me here at Digital Asset Summit 2026 in New York City is Ronit Ghosh, global head teacher of finance for Citi, Citi's think tank for the future of money and technology, and author of Future.

Money.

So Rona, great to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

So all of us have heard of self-driving cars, and we may have even been in one, but what about self-driving money?

How does AI actually take the wheel?

Sure, so most of us don't want to think about money.

We use money to do something else.

You mentioned paying your mortgage, paying your restaurant bill, paying your taxi ride.

Now we take an Uber, not a taxi, and the payment is.

Already done.

So the great thing about Uber is GPS, the search function and payment and transparency, and I think that will happen across all activities, basic activities like regular shopping that will be done by IoT and agents.

Our fridge will order milk for us and eggs.

More complicated things such as holidays, maybe we'll chat to an agent and the agent will tell us do this, do that, and then there'll be a payment embedded in the chatbot.

And so that's kind of where we're going to, we believe.

Yeah, and Rhonda, at the future of finance, I know that you take a look at the big picture here, and I'm sure that you're thinking about what all of this means in terms of agentic AI and the role of finance, but you also have called this the chat GPT moment for stable.

Point.

So can you walk us through this?

Sure.

So we published a big report last year in April, so almost exactly 1 year ago called Digital Dollars, and we said this is the chat GPT moment for blockchain adoption by institutions.

We've spent like a decade talking about this.

What was different last year was that we began saying start of the year, this administration is serious about having Pro-digital asset legislation and that was a game changer and in our April report we said this is coming, this is good for the dollar, this is good for US markets and then when The Genius Act was passed.

Actually.

Treasury Secretary Besant even used our research and our forecasts and said this is why we need to do it.

We've obviously moved on since then.

Now we're talking about clarity, or lack of clarity.

So things have picked up.

That was really important last year and we saw a lot of institutional projects, plans begin to go from pilot to.

Production, including at C.

Yeah, so I do want to get your take on what we're seeing in the regulatory climate because we all are paying attention to what's coming out of the nation's capital, but we know legislation does take time and there's a difference between fast money and smart money because we all know when we're talking about finances there's Compliance as as regulation.

So what do you expect to happen next?

So there's a lot of progress already underway.

Why are big institutions looking at this digital asset and crypto space?

First of all, and most importantly, clients.

Clients, big institutional clients of us, many of whom are speaking at this event, have been saying for a while now we'd like to do more using crypto.

Secondly, a lot of institutions saying we'd like to take Tradfi assets and put it on chain, put it on blockchain, so not selling crypto to clients, but the opposite.

They can tradify on chain.

We think that's going to be a huge market.

People call that tokenization or real world assets or financial assets on chain.

That's going to be a huge asset.

And thirdly, we have the legislative progress and linked to that sometimes maybe not as discussed is how.

Regulators and supervisors have already changed their tone since the end of 2024.

Regulators and supervisors in the US more constructive in general, so that's really important as well.

So lots of things happening.

And I do want to ask you about your research over at Citi's Future of Finance.

Though I understand that a borderless financial landscape by 2030 is envisioned here, but there are a lot of steps here.

So how is this going to actually unfold?

Yeah, so we think that there'll be lots of different parallel changes happening.

So we talked about agentic commerce and agentic AI, and that's more of a C2C or a B2C thing.

That's a consumer thing.

There's a B2B institutional change happening, and we can see this.

I was in Europe last week talking to many governments, ministries of finance, academics, corporates, and even In Europe, I'm based in Dubai in the Middle East, all over the world, not just in the US, we're beginning to see a lot of activity going from pilot and press release into production.

So in the institutional space by 2030, maybe even hopefully 2028, we see envision a lot more activity. activity, so a lot more bonds being issued, lots of money market funds going on chain, and bonds being issued being bonds on chain, and then as well linked to that cash on chain.

So all of this happening together and why there's a profit incentive.

We think this will generate a bigger market and that's why our clients want to do this.

There's an efficiency argument as well, but there's also a profit argument here to be made.

Yeah, and Ronna, you and I are paying attention to what's happening here on the ground at Digital Assets Summit 2026.

So what are the conversations that you're having right now when it comes to the future of finance?

Yeah, so I'm going to be on stage later today on a panel, I think it's called. banks are doing in crypto with other banks, sovereigns, consultants, and looking forward to that this afternoon.

I've just arrived today and I've already run into a bunch of different people who are active in this space, from regulators to policymakers to investors, so.

Looking forward to the day.

Well, Rana, it was great to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining us this morning and thank you so much for sharing your perspective and your insights.

Thanks for having me.

My pleasure.

Thank you.